


dead eyes

by polkaprintpjs



Category: Original Work
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Child Abuse, Gen, Homophobia, Non-Chronological, Religious Abuse, ask to tag, read it or not idc but theres no plot, religious trauma, this is just vent fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkaprintpjs/pseuds/polkaprintpjs
Summary: what it says in the tags. this is vent fic. some of the chaps were originally uploaded then deleted
Kudos: 1





	1. count

**Author's Note:**

> what it says in the tags. this is vent fic. some of the chaps were originally uploaded then deleted

You watch her through the window, waddling up and down the walkway.

The front steps the the porch and back, one hand on her back, the other holding the phone to her ear.

You don’t hear him but your little brother is there, next to you and peeking over your shoulder. You can smell the dirt and sweat and boy-stink.

She makes another lap and you bend your knees just enough she can’t make you out behind the couch. You know she can’t see you anyway, the glare of the sun too much against the windows and the dimness of the house, but you can’t escape the urge to hide.

He doesn’t move and you reach back, find his shoulder and push. He startles back, hits the back of your head hard enough your teeth click together.

You don’t react as he skitters away, to sulk in his bedroom.

She turns back to the steps and walks away from the house and you straighten again.

Another brother is crying in his playpen. He’s too old, she says, but she’s not in the house and he eats everything. If you let him out he’ll get into something he shouldn’t and it’ll be your fault.

He whines and says the closest thing to your name he can manage. Jay-jay, jay.

You tip your head at him and don’t take your eyes off her.

It’s fourteen steps each way and she’s on step eight. 

You look his way long enough to see he’s all right- just bored and fussy.

As long as he doesn’t wake the two littlest, that’s okay.

He sees you looking, makes grabby hands and you feel your mouth pulling in a sad smile but you know your eyes stay the same. Dead eyes, the book you snuck into the master bath to read well before anybody else was up had said.

Dead eyes.

You like the phrase. Dally was angry, though, and you’re not. You know better.

But he still had someone he wanted to keep safe and you have someones and that’s close enough.

Your brother cries louder and you remember it’s been a while since you changed him. You pull him out before she hits step thirteen.

It’s hard, the edge hits just below your armpits and you can’t bend over it so you have to use your arms.

His cloth diaper is soaked and his playpen is wet and your stomach hurts.

You’d given him another blanket and somehow he had a pillow and that’s another load of laundry.

Her murmur of a voice tilts up and you know she’s coming back inside.

You put him on your skinny hip and pretend you can’t feel pee spreading across your side and down your leg as you walk him to the bathroom.

He wraps his arms around your neck and his feet tangle around your knees and you remember using the scale at Grandma’s last week. You weigh almost thirty pounds more than him.

Your stomach hurts.


	2. scrub

You can tell exactly when she loses her temper. 

You’re not even looking her way where you’re on tiptoe to scrub the oatmeal off the stockpot and you can tell. It’s the way her voice changes and your brother reaching for the rags in the sink goes still for just a second. 

You never listen to the words.They hurt worse than anything except maybe the belt. 

Your sister says something back and you want to wince. 

It’s not her fault. 

She’s small and young and doesn’t know better. You wish she’d pay attention, though. If she just looked, just tried to watch, she’d see how she makes it worse. 

Your mom raises her voice, hard and angry and you don’t stop working but you do turn off the water. 

The extra noise only makes it worse. 

She’s still shouting and next to you he jerks. You step on his foot so he doesn’t say anything, because when he gets involved she gets mean. He hits you in the face with the wet, stinky rags and shoves you, hard. 

You’d forgotten he doesn’t like to wear shoes. 

You don’t try to say anything, because she’d just get angrier. All he has to do is say sorry and let her yell and it’ll be fine. 

You know he won’t, though, and he doesn’t. 

You’re not surprised. 

She storms past you so fast you cringe against the sink and the counter’s edge digs into your ribs. You spin to look back at the sink and try to pick the scrub brush up with shaking hands. 

You hear the rattle of wood on ceramic and you don’t have to look to know she went for the wooden spoon. Better than the paddle, but that’s just because with the spoon, she’s quick about it. 

With the paddle she makes you walk to the couch and bend over and count. 

He’s yelling though and you know he doesn’t appreciate it either way. 

You get your fingers to wrap around the scrub brush and start again. He’s still crying and even the fuzzy place in your head can’t block that out and your chest hurts. A minute later and your butt hurts, too. 

You stare out the window and pretend the green smudges aren’t smudges at all, imagine the knot on the walnut tree closest to the deck as an owl’s face. 

You pretend the cat on the windowsill has its ears pinned back to stare at her behind you, still shouting. 

You pretend it's not watching you. 

You pretend its ears go up the longer it looks at you and its fur doesn’t stand up. 

You pretend the wet on your face is from the rags and you pretend a lot of things. 

You keep on pretending until suddenly you take a breath and feel it and the room is quiet. The cat’s gone. 

You start scrubbing again. He’s on the floor picking up the rags. It’s your fault, he says. 

It’s your fault. Again.


	3. sneak

You know this is wrong. 

You know there’s something wrong with you, but you can’t stop.

Grandpa says something a little too loud and Dad does that fake smile and laugh he does when he’s uncomfortable. You take another step back. 

No one’s watching and you duck into the hallway, feeling like you’ve done something horrible.

You edge around the creaky boards and make it to your bunkbed, crawl up so so slow. 

You pull the book from under your pillow and flip to your place. You didn’t have a bookmark and you never remember page numbers but it’s easy to remember how many pages were on each side where you’d left on. 

Gorath is starving and sick, so so thirsty. 

You shiver and cross your skinny legs under you. He’d be okay, you were pretty sure, but maybe not. He was a main character, and those were always okay, but so had Martin and Luke and they’d died. 

Viska is cruel enough he might do it. 

Your dad knocks on the doorframe almost a hundred pages later and you almost fall off the bed. He doesn’t look upset, though. 

They left, he says. Good book? 

You nod. 

His coworker had heard you loved to read and sent a book home with him every Monday. It was on his bathroom counter by Thursday night, and Friday night you’d have a new one. 

You loved this book. He nodded back and headed to his room, past your door. 

You look back to the book, slowly. It’s probably safe to keep reading. Maudie is yelling at Asio and you want to know if he’ll try to eat her or not. 

Mom will be quiet for a while, because she’s always sad when Grandma and Grandpa leave. 

You are too, because Grandpa’s kinda mean and Grandma lets him. 

You’re pretty sure that’s not why she’s sad, though. 

You go back to reading and when you remember to blink the book’s finished and your throat hurts like you’ve been crying. 

You like this one. Gorath makes you so sad, though. 

And it’s horrible of the Longtooths, to burn his grandparents alive. They’re rats, though, that’s what they do. 

You sneak into your parent’s room to put it on his counter. 

It’s only Sunday, but maybe you’ll get a new book early this week.

Otherwise, Friday is forever away. 

You check the kitchen to see if the veggie tray has anything left. Only broccoli, but that’s better than nothing. You eat a limp piece and pretend it doesn’t make you want to gag. 

Most of the kids are on the couches, reading or napping. 

You pick the couch with your favorite brother. 

He pretends not to notice you. 

He’s probably still mad you stepped on his foot a couple days ago. You reach over and pet his blonde hair, so pretty and soft. 

He jerks his head away, but puts it back after a minute. 

Your own hair is red, and everyone says it’s pretty.


	4. dirt

You don’t remember, honest. 

You don’t know what you did. You know better than to say I don’t know, so you stay quiet. She’ll take it as stubbornness, not lying- and you don’t lie. 

Ten for every word and double for attitude. 

So you don’t say anything, and she doesn’t decide you’re lying, and that’s good. 

Her hand is tight on your shoulder and it hurts but you’re still because flinching away is defiance and that’s Bad. 

You can’t feel your face but you know you don’t look much of anything right now- not mad or scared or upset at all. 

She squeezes tighter and you don’t breathe, not even a little, because if you have air you can make noise and that’ll make it worse. 

She’s talking and you tune in enough to catch the instruction, the plea. 

You’re dirt, you get it? Lower than dirt, lower than worms. Now you pray and you ask Him to keep you from your pride the next time you think you’re so much better than anyone else. Did you hear me? 

You nod and she lets go. 

You drop to your knees and sit back, hands clasped and head down. Prayer pose, one of them anyway. 

She walks away after a minute but you’re not praying, dry eyes on the floor. 

He wouldn’t hear you, anyway. 

Everyone says He listens to true requests, not bargains or deals, not whining. 

You don’t see how, though. If you were all-powerful, you’d ask for something. 

A pretty rock for kids in the woods, a weird coin for kids in the cities. Adults could pay real money, though, five dollars or so. That’s how much you’d give for a pretty rock. 

He can’t want to listen to a little worm on a dirty kitchen floor; He only listens to people like you on mountains and by rivers and in the middle of the night in a garbage heap. 

You don’t pray and you don’t cry. 

Your brother is frozen at the table, you can see his legs dangling from the bench out of the corner of your eye. The two of you just sit there, still and quiet until he bolts, knocks the bench over on his way out. 

You flinch hard at the noise, scramble up to fix it. 

She demands to know if you did that and you shake your head, don’t look her in the eye. 

She grabs your shoulder again and you go easy when she pulls you for a hug. You relax and lift your arms enough to make her think you’re hugging back. 

The deception makes your throat hurt but you don’t want to be near her. 

When she lets go you go right out the back door, double around the big garage so she’ll go to the front door to shout. You head down to the creek, duck into the little outcrop and fall against the tree. 

This is the kind of place He listens to worms like you.


	5. late

Falls Creek is nothing like what you’d hoped and you’re lonely and out of your depth. 

Your brother is pretending you don’t exist and you don’t know anyone here and you’re heading to your bunk to sit quiet and alone. 

Hey! Someone says behind you just a little too loud and this girl makes your whole chest hurt. 

She’s got curls that are almost firetruck red and big brown eyes in a pale face and a crooked mouth and you don’t know if you want to be her or look at her forever. 

Hey, she says again. Let's go down to the lake. 

She grabs your arm and you follow her. You know her for a year and four months and you never once ask Liz how old she is. You’re out of church camp three weeks and she shows up at youth group, tells you to tell your parents she’ll bring you home later. 

You do and they let you go, a miracle but maybe not. Miracles are for important people, or at least people who matter. 

You’re 15 and she drives you 45 minutes to a McAlisters she works at and she buys you your sandwich- a Memphian, no tomato, mustard, mayo- and you sit at a table. 

She’s a whirlwind and in no time at all you sleep half awake, watching the wall and waking at every crunch of gravel. When you let her in she’s crying sometimes but more often she’s smiling wide and mean. 

She sleeps on the couch curled against you and you watch the ceiling for hours and your whole body hurts. Sometimes she doesn’t sleep and the two of you walk down the cul-de-sac and back for hours until the sky turns pinky-grey. 

She talks and you listen and sometimes you interject but you let her talk herself out. 

Once, just the once, she reaches out and grabs your hand, squeezes tight enough it hurts and you squeeze back. She throws your hand away like it’s dirty and talks for hours about the gays and how she can’t say she doesn’t judge because the bible says they’re sinners and so she does judge. 

You don’t get it, don’t know the connection but you nod along and pretend your hand isn’t warm where she’d held it. 

She hates her stepdad and her mother is dying and she’s so sad and angry and she’s just waiting till she graduates to go military. 

You don’t say it out loud but your first real friend ever tells you to your face she’s leaving and not coming back and you think for just a minute that she’s leaving you behind. But she wants to leave so so badly and you could never ever try to stop her. 

One day you’re tired of her talking again with relish about how the gays are gonna burn and you say some drivel about how He is about love above all else and she tells the youth group you’re a dyke.


	6. sour

It’s out of your mouth in seconds, rotted honey dribbling through the gaps in your teeth. 

It’s seconds too fast and too long, seconds you regret as hurt crumples across his face. 

He’s fragile in the strangest ways, things you don’t blink at making him flinch. But even you don’t appreciate being called stupid, and you took care to make the jab land with sickly soft words.

Not soft enough. 

She’s got a grip on your shoulder that sends pain up your neck and down your arm and you apologize before the order registers. 

Your brother doesn’t look happy, at least. He’s spiteful sometimes but not this time, too surprised and hurt. 

You usually keep his smarts off limits but you’re mean today, mean to your bones. 

She marches you to the kitchen, not the bathroom. You twist in her grip to check her free hand- she doesn’t have the paddle, and last you knew it wasn’t in the kitchen. The spoon’s not so bad, you comfort yourself as she wrenches you back to face front. 

As long as she goes for wood and not plastic, because plastic stings worse. 

She stands you at the end of the island closest to the fridge, opposite where you’re put for spankings. 

If you’re not getting soaped and you’re not getting spanked- what is she doing? You stare as she pulls out apple cider vinegar from the lower lazy susan and rattles around in the drawer for the quarter cup measure. 

She pours just halfway between the eighth-cup line and the top. 

You can smell the vinegar from a counter away and its sweetly sour the way your words were meant to hit and you meant your apology but now you mean it more. 

She holds it out, demand obvious. You take the measuring cup carefully, with stiff fingers that hardly grasp the handle. 

All of it, she says cold and you don’t wait to let the fear settle in your bones, just gulp it all down at once. 

You try to, anyway, but just cough it out all over the floor. It’s thicker than water and sticks in your throat and you cough and cough. 

She frowns harder and you know that wasn’t good enough. She takes the cup from your hands and pours again. 

You go slower this time and you don’t much remember the taste but your throat and stomach are warm and burning. 

You get a rag and clean your mess while she tells you about honey and flies and vinegar. 

_ Out of the mouth comes the overflow of the heart. _

You’d rather the spoon. 

You rinse the rag out in the sink, because when you went to put it in the laundry she’d raised her voice again. Your throat and stomach are still too warm. 

She leaves the room and you can hear her muttering angrily as the washer lid slams and the cabinets bang- looking for the white vinegar she prefers over detergent. 

White vinegar and borax. 


	7. weak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is actually one of my favorite memories.

You feel a big hand on your shoulder and he doesn’t have to shake you awake. 

Your dad steps away, hand coming up to cradle her bald head as you scramble up. 

At this point you don’t need instructions. You run to the living room and by the time his long legs bring them to the recliner, you’ve got a book picked out and are settling down cross-legged. 

Last week you sat butterfly in this chair, half-remembering ballet from years ago, and your knees barely touched the arms. He’s prepared with a pillow, though, wedges it on one side of you and hands her over. 

She’s barely a month old and when this had started you had been afraid of falling back asleep to her tiny warmth and the still-dark sky, but now you know she runs hot enough you never do get comfortable enough to nap. 

You rock her in your skinny arms and shush her, baby talk nonsense until the microwave goes off and he hands you the bottle. 

You know he tested it before he carried it from the kitchen but you still squirt a thin stream of milk onto your wrist, just to be sure. 

You don’t want to burn her. It’s just right and you feed the rubber nipple into her hungry mouth as she starts to gum at your shirt. 

He cups the back of your head, just for a second, and it feels better than any hug. Bye, xxxxx-angel, he says and the door closes quiet behind him, the deadbolt clicking as he turns the key. He always locks up on his way out, because if somebody tried to break in, well. 

You’re nine and holding a baby. 

It wouldn’t go well. 

You make sure she’s nursing well, check to see his car pull out of the drive and down the cul-de-sac, and only then do you open your book. 

Caddie Woodlawn is nothing new, you’ve read it a thousand times; you flip straight to the part where the boys are harrassing the poor teacher. It’s her fault for not asking, not finding out why they weren’t interested in school, and you feel bad for the boys. 

If you were a boy thirty years ago, you’d have to skip school to help with harvest, too. It can’t feel good, to know you’ll never learn, never know as much as everyone else. 

You feel like that sometimes, too. 

But you’re not a boy thirty years ago and you’re not big and strong and a teenager. 

You get to the part where the schoolhouse is about to catch on fire and the boys join in fighting the fire, and you don’t want to read anymore. 

You’re not big and strong, you could never help the way they do. There’s so much you don’t know and that you’ll never know, and you can’t even make up for it by being strong. 

She fusses a little and you adjust the bottle’s angle until she’s quiet and satisfied. 


	8. freckles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw attempted sexual assault

You’re excited to meet them. You don’t much like your aunt or her husband but they’re adopting three kids and you’re excited. 

Only one is even close to your age, apparently, but you’re still excited. 

When you meet them you’re a little underwhelmed- the younger two have red hair, but it’s darker than yours. The oldest is 18, he’d aged out during the adoption process but he’s still theirs, legally. The girl is 16 and the youngest is 15, freckles thick on his face. 

You and your brother are sent outside to play with him and the three of you start a game of tag. 

He only chases you for some reason, even when your brother plays bait. 

The two of you are a team and always win when you play against kids at church or co-op. 

He only chases you, though. 

You decide to take it to the side yard by the garden; it’s cold enough you don’t need to worry about snakes. The dirt is soft and the grass is high and tangled; you know exactly where to run but he’ll be tempted to take shortcuts and will be slowed way down. 

You dodge around a tree to get space to find your brother, to make sure he gets the plan; your feet stutter, just a second’s delay, as you realize he’s going inside the house, bored of being ignored. 

Your new cousin notices, too. 

The weird thing in your brain that tells you to crawl into the cabinets during storms and breathe quiet in the dark is screaming, you realize, it wants to  _ run _ and suddenly you know it’s not a game. 

That second of hesitation costs you, though, and one hand fists in the back of your collared shirt and the other snags the waistband of your denim skirt. 

He slings you down and as you hit dirt you know this is going to end badly. He’s four years older and a hundred pounds heavier and you know from the bottom of your gut you’re on your own. 

You start to crawl away but he pins you down, starts trying to work your skirt off. 

You don’t understand but you never have, really.

You thrash and twist and he helps you roll over, goes your waistband to unbutton and unzip but you’re scrabbling for purchase, end up with a handful of dirt and he cringes away as the south wind helps it into his eyes. 

You kick as you scramble up, up and away and you go in a straight line to the house, another fifteen feet and you’ll be safe, you’ll be in the line of sight of the adults. You fix your clothes when you get to the porch, ignore him calling after you as you brush the leaves and dirt off. 

When you go inside you tell your dad you twisted an ankle and he doesn’t make you play with your new cousin. 

You stay with your dad till they leave hours later.


	9. politics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this one is actually from the culty church; he was very. _traditional_, if you catch my drift. anyway this experience really shaped how i interact with religion and authority figures

You made a mistake. 

That’s nothing new, really, because you are a flawed being and incapable of refraining from sin. 

But this, this wasn’t a sin. 

You’d slipped into the sanctuary after eating, before you could be forced into clean-up duty and she’d followed without needing a signal. 

You kept your voices down in the big room, but she still slapped a hand across your face when your giggles bounced around the exposed wood rafters and into the entryway. You didn’t mind, not when her smile was so wide you were pretty sure it had to hurt. 

You ended up by the stage, shoving each other gently and talking about nothing, the way children do. You dared enough to climb the stairs until she yanked you back by a wrist. 

The score was 3-4, her favor; you’d gotten distracted by the dark sheen of her hair against dark skin and let her win twice. You’d been set for the next round, elbows on the table and hands clasped, free hands palm down on the table so you can’t brace. 

She made a joke about the way you can’t hold eye contact and it didn’t sting, not from her. 

You’d been laughing, the both of you, and she shifted so your hands are more relaxed, less ready to wrestle. 

He came in and said something loud and angry and you both jerked. 

You let go of her hand first, fingers slipping away. 

Years later, you still don’t know what he said. 

When you hurried back to the community room and started helping wipe down the tables, you pretended not to see him talk to her parents, then yours. Your mother pulled you aside, asked what you were doing in the sanctuary. 

Just arm wrestling, you told her. She said you can’t go in there alone anymore, and you understood she didn’t mean Emily. 

He’s still suspicious and cold, even weeks later and panic is curling around your throat with every breath you take under the church’s roof. 

You don’t know what you did wrong but you have to fix it, you have to make him  _ stop. _

You were baptized a couple months ago so you’re allowed to partake in Communion, even though you’re barely twelve and at other churches you have to be sixteen, you’re pretty sure. 

The point is you are standing with the congregation, watching Pastor Jeff look out over you all and say, slow and serious, that if anyone had any sin, any separation between them and the Lord, they should not eat of the bread, the Body, nor drink of the wine, the Blood until they’re pure before the Lord. 

He’s a deacon and when he brings the bread to your table, you catch his eye and shake your head, just a bit. 

He’s proud, you can see in the way he nods to you and keeps walking and you sit with your hands in your lap while everyone else takes Communion and you shake and shake.


	10. straw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up this one is about animal birth going wrong. baby and mother survive

You’re up and moving before you can blink the sleep out of your eyes. 

Something is wrong and you need to fix it, that’s all you know. 

Your parents say something on their way out the door as you stagger past, pulling your shirt all the way down and adjusting your pants. Something about town and Crest. Cool, groceries. 

You get to the kitchen before you realize and reroute to the mudroom, dragging on rainboots and tangling your hair in a hairtie- you can brush it later. Important stuff now. 

By the time you let yourself through the gate and start toward the barn proper, you figure out what’s wrong- Dad should be at work, it’s Wednesday; and Meadow is crying. 

In the barn, you can see she’s in pain, half-kneeling on her forelegs and thrashing her head. 

You didn’t know goats could cry but she is and you feel sick. 

You murmur to her softly while you drag the metal grating away from her stall. Poor thing, poor poor Meadow. 

Her pupils are slits and her whole body shakes.

Her water bucket’s empty and she’s panting, so you fill it and bring it back, skinny arms shaking. She slurps it greedly, choking once or twice on a groan. 

You pat her neck and steel yourself, walk behind her; you can see the problem immediately. 

She’s in labor and the baby’s breech. It’s upside down, trying to come out butt first instead of head-and-forelegs. What’s worse is it’s head is turned enough you can see the tiny nose next to its wet tail. 

God help you, and Meadow too. 

You know what to do, because you read and researched and asked questions about this very scenario; the problem is you’ve never seen a birth before, you’ve never done anything close to this before, and it’s all theory you have to perform without practice. 

You’re shaking a little as you get the tub, tear and dump some newspaper scraps in, with a towel on top; you drop the paper towels in chickenshit, have to throw away the first five layers. 

You scrub your hands and arms clean at the water pump outside, hating yourself for every second you’re out of Meadow’s sight. She escalates to screaming. 

You hurry back and drop to your knees in the straw, take a breath and lean in. 

You wait for a contraction to end and push the kid back in, apologizing to Meadow when she bleats into her water bucket. 

The next few minutes blur until tiny hooves cradling a tiny nose emerge and from there the kid slides out easy. 

You wipe its face down quick so it doesn’t breathe in any fluid, then scrub the rest of it with paper towels. 

In the tub it goes and the tub goes in front of Meadow so she can lick her baby dry while you use sticky hands to milk her for her colostrum, the first milk. 

You’re shaky and tired, and so is she. 


	11. ripple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no, her real name isn't ben or benna. i also call her lilycat. shes got a lot of nicknames

You squint against the South wind, curling around the tree to brush bare warmth against your eyes. 

The bark is painful where you rest your knuckles on the trunk but you don’t shift. Your knees are numb and you know kneeling was a bad idea, but- it lifts a leg and steps delicately, hardly a ripple in its wake. 

The Great Heron is gorgeous in the murky, mucky water and you want desperately to blink and just as desperately to never look away. 

It's aching minutes before you half walk, half crawl away, trying to put life back in your numb legs without disturbing the bird. 

When you get back up to the house, shaking, she’s on the porch on the phone. You can see her through the front windows as you slip into the kitchen from the back. 

You gasp a little. It’s so much warmer inside, it takes your breath away. 

Your littlest sister is watching you with wide eyes at the table. She probably thinks you’re upset. What you are is empty, though, insides carved out by the howling wind and the aching elegance of the bird. 

She can’t know that’s what you are- you’d run down down  _ down _ after being yelled at for nothing at all and Ben has to think you’re upset about it- and you want the sad, scared look on her face to leave so you stick your numb hands down the back of her shirt and she shrieks at the cold. 

You yank your hands out and snatch her up, make as if to sling her over your shoulder but she clutches at your neck instead and you drop onto the bench to hug her close. 

She goes still and quiet and you know she’s still sad for you and that won’t do at all, not even a little. 

Your heart hurts when she’s sad or angry or anything except happy so you shift her enough to blow raspberries into her neck and she giggles so hard she starts hiccuping. 

You laugh and snort but get her a glass of water anyway while she pouts at you from the table. 

Here, Benna. Drink it upside down, okay? That’s what Nana always said to do. 

She thinks you’re lying, and squints severely at you. 

You eye her right back and hold out the glass. 

Your suspicious face is much more impressive than hers, or anyone’s, really, so she pouts and takes the glass. She chokes a little when she hiccups in the middle of swallowing and you pat her tiny back to help her breathe again. 

You hear the front door close as your mother comes back inside. She looks embarrassed when she sees you with Ben- shs probably feels bad. 

You don’t really care. Ben leans against you as she takes another sip. 

She’s a smart little thing, Benna. 

Mom loves  _ family _ , after all, and you don’t get in half as much trouble when she sees you making nice with your siblings.


	12. daze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> descriptions of torture methods, dissociation, questionable grounding tactics. the books exist ill find the exact titles later

You’d been very careful, reading the His Story books, to not linger on the pages that really interested you. Every page was read at the same speed, notes occasionally taken from every section; even the page numbers jotted were random. The only difference was that you pressed just a bit harder on the pages you *really cared about. Later, when no one cared what you did, you’d go back through and pore over the stories and the little hints of a narrative just barely there. You didn’t understand it, not then, but all the same your heart rate increased and you couldn’t quite look away from the terrible, grotesque depictions. You think about it sometimes, when you lie, about how in the green book the civilization discussed forced liars to reach into boiling water to retrieve a stone, else they’d face death. You think about being suspended over bamboo shoots for the maximum three days it would take for you to die from the impalement, or the Death of a Thousand Cuts when someone comments on your shaking leg or the way you sit against walls or watch the reflections in the windows or know how to conceal anything from a phone to a knife to a soda without trying. You think about your ribcage being peeled open, the bones bent back and your organs helplessly exposed when you try to explain yourself or ask for anything more than what you’re given.   
You’d been very careful. No one caught onto your favored reading and you certainly didn’t clue anyone in. You’d been known as the child with no secrets, the blabber-box with nothing useful behind a pale, blank stare. You’ve always liked that idea, that you were nothing more than a person-shaped object. Real people were strange and weird and scary and honestly you’d much rather not be one at all.   
You think about thumbscrews while sitting on the floor in the speech-practice room Mr. K slept in sometimes instead of going home. You think about thumbscrews while the shadows on the floor flicker from the window behind your head and your head is horribly light. When McKenzie comes in to tell you that you’re too sick to eat everyday and too tired to go to class because He is punishing you for being queer, you get up and walk past her without a thought. You tell Mr. K you’re going to the library to use a computer and instead you stand and read and reread the titles of the books on the middle row, third shelf. You read and reread and think about boots with spikes on the inside, about rats in cages where the only way out is to gnaw through your stomach. Years before, when you’re picking up rocks to drop in a bucket to carry down to the garden to atone for the sin of anger, you’d thought about the boots with spikes. You read titles unseeing until the librarian tells you leave, the bell’s ringing.


End file.
